Universitas Teknokrat Indonesia 1.1 Background of Study
Systemic functional linguistic (SFL) distinguish language as a sense of human experience through a meaning based on its function within lexicogrammar as part of metafunction (Halliday &Matthiessen, 2014). Metafunction involves a theme, subject, and actor in making meaning throughout the whole language based on a clause that refers to systemic accounts of grammar. Metafunction is divided into;
ideational, interpersonal, and textual meaning (Halliday &Matthiessen, 2014, p.84-85). Thus, ideational metafunction deliberately being analyzed since it is constructing human experience in form of spoken or written text, where Halliday (2014) states that ideational metafunction of grammar is “language as reflection and “language as action” (p.30).
Human experience consists of many events and being constructed as a figure of happening, doing, sensing, being, or having (Halliday &Matthiessen, 1999, 2014).
All figures emerge through several processes and sorted out in the grammar of the clause into a process types known as transitivity. Transitivity presents the lexicogrammar uses in describing various events as a figure that centered on a process (Halliday &Matthiessen, 2014). Transitivity refers to how phenomena of the real world being represented on the language used as part of linguistics structures (Miranti, 2014). Ong’onda (2016) also states that language is a means of expressing and transferring ideas or experiences among people. Text also refers
Universitas Teknokrat Indonesia to any language, where it has function as a process of making meaning (Halliday
&Matthiessen, 2014).
Therefore, newspaper contains numerous of text which contains broad information include; news, advertisement, politics, education, science, religion, etc., either in form of daily or weekly newspaper which its publication including current news, editorials, features articles and advertising (Azeez, 2013). Among those sections, editorial has a specific role to influence the readers’ perspective than any other newspaper text type. Newspaper editorials also a media that engage with various issues including human social issues, problems, and opportunities where those issues express sociopolitical significance towards certain events (van Dijk, 1989; McCombs, 1997 in Afzal & Harun, 2015). Since editorials present as an argumentative texts which express the opinion of a newspaper due to the current news even controversial event (Elyazale, 2014)
Similarly to Western stereotypes toward Middle East Countries that significantly shape Muslims and East Asians negatively which increased xenophobic sentiments due to these communities followed by cultural, social, and political differences derived to inapposite negative acts. (Wu, 2002 in Najm, 2019). This xenophobic sentiment happened because the language used that being represented in each media resulted differently. It could be seen from how the media deliver the controversial issues that happened in the beginning of the year due to Iranian military leader assassination. Therefore, these issues have been written in several newspaper editorial and the editorials selected are the Al- Jazeera as Arabic and
Universitas Teknokrat Indonesia English newspaper from Qatar. These newspapers being claimed to have a predominantly Islamic perspective, as well as having anti-Western and anti-Israel biases (Graaf, 2005). Along with the New York Post as one of the American English newspaper and is considered as the 4th ranked for its distribution in the US in 2018. It has a lean right perspective where its issues focus on conservative editorial policy by keeping the traditional pattern, nationalist pattern, and sensationalist headlines. (Allsides.com)
Hence, those matters still categorize as political news the current issues happened, it can be about social lives, sociology, political science or cultural studies (Fairclough; 2001 in Miranti: 2014). Although research on political news is various already in terms of demonstration, immigration, or terrorism, yet, there is still a limited in discussing language use in editorial. Moreover, Soleimani is one of the military figures who mostly being mentioned due to his assassination did by the U.S drone strike and it becomes one of the controversial issues at the beginning of the year. He was known as an Iranian senior military officer for 22 years that serve in Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Quds Force.
He is considered the second most powerful person in Iran and becomes Ayatollah Khamenei’s, right-hand man.
However, the present researcher interest to analyze how ideational meaning that represented IRGC’s commander in Al Jazeera and New York Post based on the language used written, especially in their newspaper editorial by adopting
Universitas Teknokrat Indonesia transitivity analysis, where previously this theory has been used by several studies.
1.2 Research Questions
The problems of this research can be stated as follows:
1. What are the transitivity components written as regards to IRGC’s commander death on Al Jazeera and New York Post editorials?
1.3 Research Objective The purpose of this study is:
1. To define the most frequent components and identify language used construing ideational meaning that represent Soleimani in Al Jazeera and New York Post editorials
1.4 The Use of Study
The uses of this analysis are divided into theoretical use and practical use 1.4.1 Theoretical Use
This analysis could share some information with other researchers about systematic functional linguistic, especially transitivity. Those who learn about SFL could obtain its uniqueness that appears in various types of sources that are used. The written text could contain the experience of the writer and make the reader sense the same experience through newspaper editorial session. Hence, through learn transitivity analysis, the future researcher could break down each part of the word and it makes the readers aware of issues that appear around it.
1.4.2 Practical Use
The researcher hopes that the readers show their awareness toward surrounding by frequently read new information from available sources, especially newspapers. A
Universitas Teknokrat Indonesia newspaper contains factual information that is unfortunate to miss. Followed by the editorial where the reader could able see the newspaper opinion toward certain issues. The information might attract the reader to sense indirect experience through argumentative text and it can be analyze through transitivity analysis that contains participant, process, and circumstance. Thus, the readers even the researchers who learn about SFL is expected to be more excited defining unique word and collecting new vocabulary written in the newspaper editorial.
1.5 Scope of Study
This research will focus on the construction of grammatical process within the text that might appear in Al Jazeera and New York Post editorials. Furthermore, through grammatical processes, the researcher also intended to describe various types of transitivity components that represents inside the newspaper editorials by seeing which clause that contains Soleimani presence, the cause of Soleimani’s death, those people that have been affected and the situation happened after the assassination written in the editorials. The editorials chosen due to Iranian leader assassination issues published during January 2020.
